REVIEW: Brandon Cronenberg’s ‘Infinity Pool’ … with a limit
Film directors for screens large and small are taking delight in skewering the 1% for everything they’ve bestowed on the rest of us during our dark and mostly unfunny times. Infinity Pool, written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg (Possessor, Antiviral), follows this trend — set by hugely successful comedy-dramas like those by Mark Mylod (The ...
Hélène Grimaud, with Wild Up & wild wolves 2
Jan
16
2023
Ed. note: This story by Debra Levine, commissioned and published by the Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for the Arts, is reprinted with permission. As a child growing up in Aix-En-Provence, the French-born piano virtuoso, Hélène Grimaud, was rambunctious. Her parents, both professors, clambered to channel her energy. Lessons in martial arts, tennis, and ballet ...
Academy Film Museum ‘Regeneration Summit’ to include music & dance
Hooray! It’s a regeneration summit! Not really sure what that is, but we’ll all find out soon enough February 3-5, at the onset of Black History Month, when The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’s Regeneration Summit: A Celebration of Black Cinema, kicks off a three-day event with the grand mission of exploring the history of ...
Jeff Beck: Death of a great guitarist. Maiming of his marquee by Orpheum Theatre
nov 6 2022 marquee photo courtesy jeff mantor ed. note: The heartbreaking and unwelcome news of the death of legendary rock guitarist, Jeff Beck, sent us careening to an earlier time and place. But for a theater full of his Los Angeles fans, that time and place was the Orpheum Theatre just two months ago, ...
Good listening: rare one-acts by Albee, Pinter at Pacific Resident Theater
Jan
5
2023
Way too much aural gobbledygook has littered our tender ears of late: Take, for example, these pithy words spoken by the aspiring* Speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy: mccarthy quoted by dana milbank in the washington post This word salad tossed in diesel fuel reflects the immense decline in the quality of American ...
To a ‘Babalu’ish 2023!
Dec
27
2022
There’s always the guy who did it first — and did it great. Then there’s the guy who ‘covers’ the song, as did Desi Arnaz on October 19, 1946, recording this marvelous, if somewhat tamped down, version of Babalú years after the seductive anthem was associated with the original “Mr. Babalú,” Miguelito Valdés. What on ...
post sponsored by Pepperdine Arts
Pilobolus at Pepperdine: Dance’s Favorite Fungus Turns Fifty
Dec
27
2022
Fifteen times performing at Pepperdine University in Malibu! Pilobolus approaches that benchmark, bringing a show on January 25 entitled “Big Five Oh,” in celebration of the beloved acrobatic dance troupe’s fiftieth birthday. With seven diverse works presented on stage, it should be a party. Musing on this occasion, I found myself wondering about the company’s ...
Just say yes! to ‘Dr. No’
Dec
26
2022
The film opened in London in October 1962 and launched the most successful franchise in motion picture history, still going strong today. The following spring, 1963, American audiences first enjoyed one of the most memorable introductory lines in movie history: “Bond. James Bond.” This adaptation of one of the spy novels penned by former British intelligence officer ...